Drunken Reflections
by SpellotapedSnidget
Summary: Sometimes it's too much to cope. Sometimes you just break.


_**TRIGGER WARNING:** A majoy part of this story is about drinking alcohol in order to cope with the tragedies life provides. If you have issues with alcohol abuse please turn away from this story!_

* * *

He was wasted. Slowly falling apart. Piece after piece separated itself from his heart or his soul or whatever it was they called it nowadays. It didn't really matter. His inside was already shattered. All that was left lay in pieces. Who cared if they were thrown away? No one wants something that is broken. In his opinion he was just helping to accelerate the process.

The amber liquid in his hand didn't burn when it flowed down his throat. He was used to it by now. At the beginning he had coughed. Not anymore. He barely realized it was anything more than water. All he wanted was that feeling of dizziness and ease. That the alcohol clouded his mind and lulled him into a softness that almost felt like peace. Sometimes the thought popped into his head that this is how it must feel to die.

He gazed at the bottle on the table in front of him. It was half empty already. Another thing that had changed. It was amazing how fast our bodies adapt. Nowadays he needed almost a whole bottle of the strong liquid to reach the blissful feeling he was craving for.

He began to fall apart the moment his other half's life stopped. It was only fitting. If his life had been a book or a movie it would have been an obvious one. There was no unexpected twist. He was also sure that it would have been a drama. He couldn't imagine any part of his life morphing into a positive direction anymore. Nor could anyone else.

He saw it in their eyes, their reactions towards him. Most people averted their gaze from him. They couldn't bring themselves to look at the broken boy when in a better world there should have been two identical faces grinning back at them. His mother was one of those people. Even with the vast amount of alcohol in his blood the stitch which ran through him at the thought hurt badly. His own mother could not look at him.

He didn't blame her for it nor anyone else for that matter. How could he have? He himself was one of those people. There was no mirror left in his flat. He couldn't stand searching his features for anything reminding him of Fred anymore. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so pathetic. Everybody else couldn't look at his face because they saw his twin brother staring back at them. He couldn't take it that he didn't detect anything but their differences. For him it was as if Fred's death had erased every bond they had had.

At first he had searched frantically for their similarities in everything that could reflect his features. When he couldn't find any he got frustrated, angry. More often than not the mirror like objects hadn't survived his rage. More often than not his knuckles had bled. But it didn't change the fact that Fred was nowhere. Not in flesh and not in his reflection.

At some point he had lost it. He couldn't cope with it anymore. So he avoided everything which could throw his features back at him. Mirrors of course, but also windows, especially at night and spoons. He didn't know when he last ate a soup. And eyes. Above all the eyes he knew best. His mother's eyes. Not particularly difficult as the wish for avoidance was mutual. His father's eyes. His brothers'. His sister's. Harry's and Hermione's. Angelina's. Lee's. To be on the safe side he had just stopped to meet them.

But even with all those precautions he couldn't evade his reflection entirely. There was one memorable day when it had started raining. Pouring really. At first he had embraced the bad weather. It meant no one was on the streets. No eyes would be directed at him. But then he had caught his features in one of the puddles. It had been a while since he had seen his reflection.

A beard had grown all over his face.

 _Fred had never had a beard._

His eyes were dull.

 _Fred's eyes had always had a promising glint in them._

He looked old.

 _Fred had never been older than twenty._

He was transfixed by his reflection, not able to tear himself away from the puddle on the ground. His clothes got drenched while standing there, doing nothing but stare. Only after it had turned dark and he couldn't glimpse a bit of him in the now rather large puddle he returned home.

On this day he drank. Much. He noticed that his vision got all blurry. That was a good thing. He noticed that the pain dulled. Another good thing. And so he decided that drinking really wasn't half bad. He decided he would try if the effect could be reproduced. It could. So he drank.


End file.
